PESHAWAR, May 28: Former President Muhammad Rafiq Tarar has claimed that under the 1973 Constitution he is still the president of the country.

“Under Article 44 of the Constitution, I am the president of the country, while Gen Pervez Musharraf has imposed himself through a fake referendum on presidency,” Mr Tarar told newsmen during a brief chat here at a function on Wednesday.

The Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), Peshawar chapter, had organised a function to commemorate Youm-i-Takbir, a day when Pakistan conducted nuclear tests at Chaghai, Balochistan, on May 28, 1998.

Speaking at the function, the former president said that under the Constitution the president should complete a five-year term but, he said, he had been removed through an “unconstitutional way.”

The former president said: “An adventurist and dismissed military general not only deposed an elected president and prime minister but also dissolved parliament.”

He said former prime minister Nawaz Sharif did not compromise on country’s nuclear programme, although the United States government used all tactics to stop him (Nawaz) from nuclear tests.—Bureau